The 115 Funniest Things to Ever Happen on Survivor
#21. Butch and the Excessive Firewood
Amazon - Episode 12
This is a moment that nearly everybody requested I put on the Funny
115. And to this day, it remains one of the
most bizarre things I've ever seen on Survivor. In fact I honestly
can't think of another moment like it. Butch
Lockley's maniacal obsession with firewood represents one of the few
times on the show where a Survivor may have
actually broken away from reality for a little while.
I know that Survivor fans (and players) love to joke that certain
people on the show are "crazy". Or
that such-and-such player is "nuts." Hell, I know I've done it several
times on this list (most notably
when talking about Mike Skupin and Brian Heidik's wife, C.C.) But we
all know those are just jokes. Nobody really
believes that Mike Skupin is crazy. Nobody really believes
that C.C. Heidik is crazy. Nobody really believes
that Matthew von Ertfelda is crazy.
Er... wait. Okay, bad example. Strike that last one.
Matthew von Dahmer
But when you're talking about Butch Lockley at the end of Amazon,
you're talking about a guy who actually did seem
to escape into kookoo-for-cocoa-puffs land for a little while. Butch
started
acting very strangely at the end of the
Amazon season, and it's entirely possible he may have literally gone
off to his happy place somewhere.
And nowhere was this more evident than in his fanatical never-ending
quest to find fahrwood firewood.
It was the twelfth episode of Survivor: The Amazon
and the players noticed that principal Butch Lockley
was starting to act a little bit strange. Now, up to this point, Butch
had been considered a fairly normal guy. True, he did quirky things
sometimes (like the time he got drunk and soiled himself, or the time
he wouldn't
look at a naked Jenna and Heidi), but for the most part Butch was just
your average, every day, middle-aged school
principal. He did some strange things, sure, but then again who didn't?
There was no reason at all to suspect
that Butch would one day go off the deep end.
But come episode twelve, the players start noticing that Butch is
acting a little bit strange. Maybe it's from
the stress of the game. Maybe it's because they've been subsisting
completely on dried manioc. Or maybe it's
from having to listen to Heidi talk for the past thirty-three days. No
matter what the cause, everybody notices
that Butch is starting to do bizarre and strange things around camp.
Like this dance.
Rob laughing at the Butch dance
Butch's Egyptian dance elicits gasps of horror from the unprepared
onlookers, but the thing that really
alarms people is Butch's newfound obsession with firewood. Because
around episode twelve, the rest of the players
realize that Butch has been stockpiling dry firewood. And when I say
stockpiling, I mean STOCKPILING. Butch is suddenly
on a never-ending crusade to gather dry firewood. He appears to be
somewhat obsessed by this
task, he is going way over the top in gathering the
amount of wood the tribe will actually need, and the
rest of the Amazon players of course find this incredibly funny.
"Butch has a boner for firewood."
The tribe already has way more wood than they could possibly use
(especially since the game will only last six
more days!). But here comes Butch, trudging in and out of the jungle
like a lumberjack possessed. And he isn't
just gathering firewood. Butch is practically committing a hate crime.
He appears to have declared a Jihad against
the tree-laden Amazonian forest. And once the other players realize
this, once they realize that Butch has officially
lost his mind over the firewood, they honestly can't stop laughing
about it.
"I don't know what Butch's obsession with firewood is. When Butch wakes
up in the morning, the first thing
he says is 'We need to go get some firewood!' When he gets back from
getting firewood, he says 'I think we need
to get some more wood!' And he's adamant about the wood."
But Rob's not alone in his newfound love for Butch and Butch's beloved
firewood quest. This is officially now
the biggest running joke in the Amazon. So all the non-Matt members of
Jacare just sit around, and joke about
the fact that:
A) Butch is going to clear the entire forest before
the game reaches day 39
B) Butch doesn't appear to realize he has crossed
over into crazy land
C) The tribe can now build a replacement Heidi and
Jenna out of all the twigs and sticks that Butch has
brought back
and D) Butch is now officially crazier than
Matthew
Butch > Matt
So now everybody gets into the act. Rob isn't the only one cracking
wise about this subject. Once the whole tribe
gets into the spirit of things, now everybody is
making firewood jokes. Now it becomes a contest of who
can top everyone else with the best Butch firewood quote.
"I don't know what he does. I don't know if he talks
to the wood...?"
(Note: Not a lot of people know this, but Jenna is
actually pretty funny in real life. If you have never
listened to the All-Stars DVD Commentaries, you are really missing out.
In fact I'll go out on a limb and say that
Jenna is just as funny as Rob C. when they're sitting there making
MST3K jokes about the episodes. I actually think
the All-Star DVD commentaries are better than the actual episodes.)
So what were my favorite parts of the "Butch is crazy/Butch is sexually
aroused by firewood" episode? Well actually I have four of them. There
are four wonderful quotes by Rob Cesternino about Butch that probably
could have made this list on their own. In fact this is probably Rob's
funniest episode of them all (and that's
saying something). So anyway here are my favorite four moments from
Butch and the Excessive Firewood. Or, if
you prefer, "Mario's favorite four Cesternino quotes about Butch."
Because that's actually a more appropriate
title.
Rob carrying firewood under Butch's orders
1. At the start of episode twelve, Butch recruits Rob to help him carry
wood back and forth from the forest. And
after a few trips, Rob realizes that he's been deputized as the
assistant tree gatherer. And this leads to one
of my favorite Cesternino quotes from the season:
"I don't know how I necessarily became the junior deputy firewood
bitch."
Butch and his firewood apprentice
2. Rob comments on Butch's increasingly bizarre behavior, saying that
he's so far gone now that even Matthew
is starting to question Butch's sanity.
"When this game is over, I think Butch is gonna need to see a
therapist. Even Matthew says 'Butch is psychotic He's crazy!'
"... And when Matt is saying you're crazy, you are
out of your fricking mind!"
3. Matt wins the reward challenge in episode twelve, and takes Rob
along with him for a picnic lunch. And Rob
gets off two of his better lines of the season when he sees that
they've been given a small barbecue grill to use
for lunch.
"Too bad Butch isn't here, cause we're lighting a fire."
"Butch is gonna be so jealous. We got coal."
4. The Jacare shelter burns down at the end of episode twelve. This is
99.99 percent because Butch had stored
so much dry firewood around their campsite. The other .01 percent is
the off-chance that maybe Heidi was somehow
the mastermind behind it. But anyway, the shelter burns down, all their
luxury items and personal belongings
are destroyed, and Rob takes the time to comment on this in another one
of his great confessionals from this episode.
"I'm not one for conspiracy theories. But I do know this.
With about 137 days worth of dry wood,
our camp burned to the ground. Was there a connection? I don't know.
I'm not one to point fingers."
*cough* BUTCH!
*cough*
So anyway that's the story of Butch Lockley and the excessive firewood.
He came to the Amazon, he lost his mind,
he declared Holy War against the Amazonian forest, and then he burned
down the shelter. He may not have won the
game, true, but that's really not all that bad for 39 days' work. After
all, it's not every player who can
be responsible for something like this on Survivor:
Butch is dismayed when he sees the remains of the shelter. Even worse,
he sees the now-empty stockpiles of Amazonian
firewood. All that wonderful firewood. All destroyed! And for nothing!
P.S. There's an amusing postscript to this moment. It happens in the
Amazon finale when Butch is nearly killed
by a falling tree branch at the final tribal Council. He stands up to
give his jury speech, he walks over to address
the final two, and... then... WHAM!
I've always enjoyed the fact that the Amazonian jungle nearly killed
Butch on his very last day in the game. Because
if that isn't some sort of karma, I don't know what is. "You cut down
my trees, I drop a branch on your head. Do you still believe in
yourself now, mister 'I've got a branch embedded in
my skull??' Muhahaha."
Either that, or Heidi made the tree branch fall with her telekinesis.
Hard to tell.
P.P.S. Here's a random bonus Cesternino quote from this episode:
*laughing* "I don't want to be on a team with Butch. *laughing*
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